Food, energy, and water security in the era of COVID-19: preliminary evidence from Colorado, United States. (Special Issue: Disparities during times of a pandemic and epidemic.)

The current global pandemic threatens the food, energy, and water security of households given the economic fallout that it has caused. In this analysis, we present preliminary survey data from respondents in Colorado, United States. We asked how the pandemic and related lockdown orders have impacted the food, energy, and water security of their households. Results imply that, in the near term, households have avoided significant insecurities, yet many have serious concerns moving forward.

A pilot study exploring the impacts of COVID-19 on small-scale direct marketing farmers in northwest Arkansas and their responses to the pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to many disruptions and challenges in local and national food systems in America. Many farms and market gardens were forced to innovate quickly and take action to survive ongoing disruption as these businesses struggled with finances and distribution of products among other challenges. Many small-scale, local farming operations in particular were able to respond to these disruptions in unique ways, which may offer useful insight into how to better prepare small farming communities for public health and other kinds of disasters in the future. This pilot study aims to better understand how COVID-19 affected the local food system in the region of Northwest Arkansas in the mid-southern United States and how small-scale, direct-sales farmers responded to the pandemic, through a survey and interview about their experiences from 2019 to 2021. Participating farmers reported changes in farming procedures and challenges in owning or working on their farms due to ongoing climate-related environmental issues or issues specific to the pandemic, such as distributing products, utilizing financial and other resources of support, and partnering with local supply-chain partners and community members to ensure local businesses' survival during COVID-19. This pilot study can provide insight into how local farming operations and their regional and smaller-scale supply chain partners have built and utilized community resilience strategies to survive COVID-19 challenges in the Northwest region of Arkansas. A statewide follow-up study will be conducted to observe how these producers navigated these challenges on a larger scale, including in different regions of Arkansas following the start of the pandemic.

The impact of temporary COVID-19 legislative moves on the ability of food enterprises to pivot in Arizona. (Special Issue: The impact of the covid-19 pandemic and the foodservice industries.)

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted shortfalls in the U.S. food system, exposing how regulatory processes shape access to the market. This paper builds on ongoing research following the impact of shut-down orders on alcohol retail via small restaurants and breweries in Arizona and examines the impacts of regulatory shifts on the ability of these food enterprises to pivot. We highlight how the concept of the pivot creates expectations of individual businesses ability to be resilient to shocks. Responses within Arizona to COVID-19 induced systemic failures, demonstrate that bottom-up pivots from small businesses can creatively and quickly meet local community needs. However, those efforts were stymied by state government and top-down approaches that proved incapable of pivoting to meet local needs. Through this case study, we highlight the need and opportunity for further examination of the interplay between regulatory agencies and small businesses in times of crisis. We invite others into the work of creating guidelines for pivoting that facilitate bottom-up and top-down collaboration while ensuring the voice and agency of different players.

Economies of community in local agriculture: farmers in New London, Connecticut, respond to the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the weaknesses of the U.S. national food system, with grocery store shelves emptied in March and April 2020 and COVID outbreaks reported throughout the summer of 2020 at meat processing plants across the country. Fleetingly, Americans turned to local farms to ensure they could access food safely in a time of uncertainty. This paper examines the economies of community that formed around local farms and how direct engagements between consumers and producers in the face of the pandemic deepened these economic structures that often put community well-being above profits. Within a capitalist system that prioritizes efficient mass production, economies of community illustrate that solidarity can improve local food system resilience. Based on qualitative and quantitative research carried out in the summer of 2020 in New London County in southeastern Connecticut, this research draws on ethnographic interviews with small-scale farmers who developed innovative ways to feed some of their community's most vulnerable members. Community economies show that we should not only depend on standardized large-scale farms and giant retail distribution;the American food system needs to continue to cultivate small-scale local production in order to improve resilience and food access. At present, the sustainability of producing and distributing food occurs at the farmer's expense. The government needs to support local food producers so they can continue to play an integral part in community well-being.

Soybean science challenge: growing soybean education beyond our borders

The Soybean Science Challenge (SSC) continues to support Arkansas STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) educational goals. It aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Junior high and high-school students are engaged in active learning and the co-creation of knowledge through the support of classroom-based lessons and applied student research. The SSC educates and engages junior high and high school science students and teachers in 'real-world' Arkansas-specific soybean science education through an original NGSS-aligned curriculum in 7E and GRC-3D format and a continuum of educational methods, which include: teacher workshops, online and virtual live stream education, virtual NGSS aligned mini-lessons for the science classroom, community gardens, personal mentoring, student-led research and corresponding award recognition, and partnerships with state and national educators, agencies and the popular media. The COVID19 global pandemic continued to alter the educational landscape in 2021, despite increased in-person instruction. The Soybean Science Challenge (SSC), by nature of its existing design and methodology, launched online Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) aligned Gathering Reasoning and Communicating (GRC)-3D and 7E lesson plans for teachers. An online course was added, including NGSS-aligned mini-lesson videos for the science classroom, and additional virtual field trips were added to the list on the Soybean Science Challenge website. The Challenge also sponsored the Arkansas Science Teacher Association Conference in October 2021, and the SSC Coordinator Diedre Young conducted a workshop on bringing agriculturally based lessons into the science classroom. The Soybean Science Challenge was also active in science fairs across the state, judging participants at both the regional and state levels. The SSC is in its second year of the junior level award at regional science fairs. Through the SSC, teachers now have access to a plethora of educational instructions that bring real-world agricultural critical thinking into the classroom and students' homes. The SSC has learned that not only do Arkansas teachers and students benefit from these additional resources but teachers and students from other states benefit as well. In 2021, the SSC program reached over 3,000 students and teachers through in-person, digital, virtual, and print methods.

Usability of telehealth among healthcare providers during COVID-19 pandemic in Nineveh Governorate, Iraq.

Objectives: To identify the usability of telehealth services and barriers during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic among healthcare providers in Nineveh Governorate-Iraq. Study design: This was a multicenter cross-sectional survey. Methods: We collected the required data from April to July 2022 using self-administered open-ended questionnaires. The healthcare providers were physicians, pharmacists, and nurses with at least six months of services at hospitals. A modified form of the Telehealth Usability Questionnaire (TUQ) was used to assess the usability of telehealth services. Results: There were 460 healthcare providers, of which 269/460 (58.5%) were users of telehealth services. These were mostly physicians (n = 167/269, 62.1%), nurses (52/269, 19.3%), and pharmacists (n = 50/269, 18.6%), with a p-value of 0.001. During the COVID-19 pandemic, physicians (n = 100/167, 60.0%) and pharmacists (n = 28/50, 56.0%) increased their provision of telehealth services. Approximately 60% of physicians and nurses preferred to provide telehealth services in a synchronized manner. The participants mostly used smartphones to provide telehealth services through Messenger/Facebook and WhatsApp applications, specifically utilizing voice and/or video messages. There was some agreement among the participants (n = 269) regarding the usability of telehealth services. The overall mean score (±SD) was 4.8 (±0.88). The most reported barriers to telehealth services were poor Internet services, the presence of specific diseases, lack of technical comprehension, and insufficient time allocated to the service. Conclusion: Healthcare providers demonstrated a tendency towards the usability of telehealth services. Despite the available barriers, triage collaborations among patients, healthcare providers, and healthcare institutions are needed to achieve more successful adoption of these services.

Jordanian nurses' attitudes toward using electronic health records during COVID-19 pandemic.

Electronic health records (EHRs) have proven their effectiveness during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. However, successful implementation of EHRs requires assessing nurses' attitudes as they are considered the first line in providing direct care for patients. This study assessed Jordanian nurses' attitudes and examined factors that affect nurses' attitudes toward using EHRs. A cross-sectional, correlational design was used. A convenient sample of 130 nurses was recruited from three major public hospitals in Jordan. All Participants completed the Nurses' attitudes Towards Computerization (NATC) Questionnaire. The overall nurses' attitude was positive; the mean was 61.85 (SD = 10.97). Findings revealed no significant relationship between nurses' attitudes toward using EHRs and nurses' age, gender, education level, previous computer skills experience, years of work experience, and years of dealing with EHRs. However, the work unit was found to have a significant correlation with nurses' attitudes toward using EHRs. Therefore, nurse administrators should arrange for the conduct of educational workshops and continuous training programs considering the needs of the nurses.

Willingness to use telemedicine during COVID-19 among health professionals in a low income country.

INTRODUCTION: The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has prompted rapid restructuring of the health-care system in an effort to stop the spread of the pandemic. Thus, telemedicine is more preferable in order to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic when face to face meeting is forbidden, allowing provision of health service over a distance. This study aimed to assess willingness to use telemedicine and factors that will determine their extent of willingness during COIVID-19 among healthcare providers working in south west of Ethiopia. METHODS: Institutional based cross-sectional study design was applied to assess willingness to use telemedicine among healthcare providers working at public health hospitals in south west of Ethiopia. Self-administered questionnaires were used. We have used Epi-info for data entry and Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS) for analysis. A structural equation modeling was performed to identify factors associated with willingness to use telemedicine at 95% confidence interval (CI). RESULT: In this study, less than half of respondents had high willingness to use telemedicine. Ease of use (ß = 0.79, 95% CI: [0.72, 0.86], p < 0.01), attitude (ß = 0.91, 95% CI: [0.87, 0.95], p < 0.01) and patient-physician relationships (ß = 0.67, 95% CI: [0.54, 0.70], p < 0.01) were variables associated with willingness to use telemedicine. Anxiety towards technology (ß = 0.74, 95% CI: [0.69, 0.79], p < 0.01) and patient-physician relationships (ß = 0.87, 95% CI: [0.81, 0.92], p < 0.01) were determinant factors of attitude to use telemedicine. CONCLUSIONS: The overall willingness to use telemedicine during COVID-19 in this setting is 46.5%. Addressing the problem related with ease of use, attitude and patient-physician relationships will help to increase the overall willingness to use telemedicine during COVID-19. An attempt to improving patient-physician relationship, provision of technical training for ease of use and working on healthcare providers' attitude will help to improve the willingness to use telemedicine.

Prediction of the number of COVID-19 confirmed cases based on K-means-LSTM.

COVID-19 is a pandemic disease that began to rapidly spread in the US, with the first case detected on January 19, 2020, in Washington State. March 9, 2020, and then quickly increased with total cases of 25,739 as of April 20, 2020. Although most people with coronavirus 81%, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), will have little to mild symptoms, others may rely on a ventilator to breathe or not at all. SEIR models have broad applicability in predicting the outcome of the population with a variety of diseases. However, many researchers use these models without validating the necessary hypotheses. Far too many researchers often "overfit" the data by using too many predictor variables and small sample sizes to create models. Models thus developed are unlikely to stand validity check on a separate group of population and regions. The researcher remains unaware that overfitting has occurred, without attempting such validation. In the paper, we present a combination algorithm that combines similar days features selection based on the region using Xgboost, K-Means, and long short-term memory (LSTM) neural networks to construct a prediction model (i.e., K-Means-LSTM) for short-term COVID-19 cases forecasting in Louisana state USA. The weighted k-means algorithm based on extreme gradient boosting is used to evaluate the similarity between the forecasts and past days. The results show that the method with K-Means-LSTM has a higher accuracy with an RMSE of 601.20 whereas the SEIR model with an RMSE of 3615.83.

Temporary reduction in fine particulate matter due to 'anthropogenic emissions switch-off' during COVID-19 lockdown in Indian cities.

The COVID-19 pandemic elicited a global response to limit associated mortality, with social distancing and lockdowns being imposed. In India, human activities were restricted from late March 2020. This 'anthropogenic emissions switch-off' presented an opportunity to investigate impacts of COVID-19 mitigation measures on ambient air quality in five Indian cities (Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Mumbai), using in-situ measurements from 2015 to 2020. For each year, we isolated, analysed and compared fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentration data from 25 March to 11 May, to elucidate the effects of the lockdown. Like other global cities, we observed substantial reductions in PM2.5 concentrations, from 19 to 43% (Chennai), 41-53% (Delhi), 26-54% (Hyderabad), 24-36% (Kolkata), and 10-39% (Mumbai). Generally, cities with larger traffic volumes showed greater reductions. Aerosol loading decreased by 29% (Chennai), 11% (Delhi), 4% (Kolkata), and 1% (Mumbai) against 2019 data. Health and related economic impact assessments indicated 630 prevented premature deaths during lockdown across all five cities, valued at 0.69 billion USD. Improvements in air quality may be considered a temporary lockdown benefit as revitalising the economy could reverse this trend. Regulatory bodies must closely monitor air quality levels, which currently offer a baseline for future mitigation plans.